The invention relates to apparatus and methods which facilitate viewing subsurface areas. The invention also relates to visual probes and methods for placing visual probes into subsurface areas.
In the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of waste disposal sites. Many of these waste disposal sites contain buried radiological contaminants or other hazardous materials. Unfortunately, poor waste management and waste disposal practices have allowed dangerous contaminants to migrate from such waste disposal sites into surrounding soils and groundwater.
Effective remediation and/or containment strategies are needed for these waste disposal sites. However, before an effective remediation and/or containment strategy can be developed for a particular waste site, the waste buried at the site should be adequately characterized. Additionally, in many cases, long-term monitoring of the waste site may be appropriate.
Characterization and/or monitoring of a waste disposal site typically involves the use of testing probes placed directly into the subsurface areas of the site for data collection. Several different types of testing probes may be used to assist in characterizing and/or monitoring the subsurface waste. One of these types of testing probes is known as a visual probe. Visual probes are used to visually inspect the physical condition of buried wastes, containers, sludges, and interstitial soils, and to provide information regarding soil moisture and contaminant migration.
Unfortunately, the placement of visual probes directly into the subsurface areas of a waste disposal site which contains buried radiological contaminants or other hazardous materials has been difficult, because placement of such probes would require drilling or coring which may bring contaminated xe2x80x9ccuttingsxe2x80x9d to the surface and may also create a pathway through which contaminated emissions may escape. As a result, rather than placing visual probes directly into such waste sites, the probes have typically been placed around the perimeter of such sites. Unfortunately, such placement only provides information when contaminants have already migrated outside of the waste site area. Moreover, when the contaminants have migrated outside of the waste disposal site area, it is likely that a major contaminant plume exists in the subsurface soil and aquifer making remediation and containment efforts more difficult and costly.
Additionally, typical visual probes are not structurally able to be advanced in difficult materials.
In view of the foregoing, it would be highly desirable to provide methods and apparatus which facilitate viewing subsurface areas in contaminated as well as non-contaminated areas, while substantially avoiding these and other shortcomings of the prior art devices.